Prisoners Of Our Own Device
by Mia Cooper
Summary: "You were in an accident. Can you tell me your name?" [Episode-related AU]
1. Some dance to remember

**Part One:** **Some dance to remember, some dance to forget**

 _Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

It isn't a sound she's familiar with. She frowns, ignoring the spike of pain that slight movement causes, and tries to identify the noise. It sounds … mechanical. It's insistent and grating, and for a few moments it occupies her full attention.

Then she begins to notice other sounds. Voices that sound as if they come from some distance away, some of them sounding tinny, _as though they're being routed through a communications system,_ she thinks, and frowns again.

There are footsteps, too. A squeaking, evenly paced tread, like rubber on a shiny surface. Quicker, hollow tapping – _a woman in high heels_ , she decides.

Somewhere, somebody is crying softly. And there are more machine-like sounds as well. An alarm shrilling, _in a distant room_ , she guesses. Other beeps, different in tone and pace to the noise that had woken her.

 _I'm awake_ , she thinks, and with that thought comes a sense of dread and urgency, and then puzzlement as she tries to comprehend why she is frightened.

She tries to move her hand, and finds she can't.

The beeping noise increases in pace.

Now she's noticing the smells. Disinfectant, and desperation, and the metallic tang of blood.

 _Where am I_?

Her head pounds and her eyes feel gritty; nonetheless, she forces her lids to open and shuts them quickly as light spills across her retinas. The beeping noise speeds up in concert with her pulse.

Footsteps approach – light and quick, in soft-soled shoes.

"Hello there," says a female voice – kind, brisk, impersonal. "How are you feeling?"

"I –" she starts, and dissolves into a fit of dry, cracked coughing. It hurts.

"Here."

Something small and cylindrical is pressed to her lips and automatically she sucks. Cool water trickles into her parched throat.

"Thank you," she manages, voice dusty. She opens her eyes again – carefully, this time.

The light that burned her eyes before has been blocked out by the shape of a woman wearing a simple white coverall. Brown hair, streaked with silver and pinned neatly behind her head. Kind eyes. _Mid-forties_ , she guesses. _Human_.

"You were in an accident," the woman offers without being asked. "You had no identifying information on you when you were brought in. Can you tell me your name?"

"I –" she stops, grasping for the knowledge on the tip of her tongue, and feels that swell of terror again.

 _Who am I_?

"No," she whispers. "No, I can't."

===0===

Indeterminate hours later, the newly-christened Jane Doe – and there's something familiar about that name, something almost right that she can't quite grasp – lies back against her pillows, utterly exhausted.

She's been prodded and pricked and questioned, over and over again, by a procession of nurses and doctors and people in uniforms she doesn't recognise, who claim to be police officers.

Her kind-eyed nurse, whose name is Marley, has switched on the wall-mounted television and shown her how to use the remote control. Jane isn't sure why Marley looked at her in such disbelief when she had no idea what to do with the controller. She doesn't seem to know anything else, so why would she know how a television works?

One of the white-coated doctors enters the room and suggests she's suffering from head trauma-induced amnesia. "You were found in an alley off Pacific Terrace," he tells her. "It looks like you were the victim of an attack. Do you remember anything about that?"

"No," she answers automatically, but for a brief moment she has a sensation of being rushed from behind, of taking a blow to the head, a kick to her ribcage.

"Seems nobody saw anything either," the doctor remarks, making a notation on the strange folder he carries. "Luckily you were found by a passerby who called an ambulance. I don't suppose you have insurance?"

Jane finds his levity disconcerting. She doesn't know what insurance is, or why she should have it, or why her doctor finds his question amusing.

"Well, I'll leave you to get some rest. The police will want to come back and see you in the morning. And don't worry. Most cases of trauma-induced amnesia resolve themselves in time." He pats her impersonally on the knee and exits.

Jane's gaze wanders the room. There's a window to her left, and through it she can see blue sky and palm trees and the squared edges of buildings. She's been told she's in the UCLA Medical Centre in Santa Monica. This means nothing to her.

With her right hand she fidgets with the edges of the white sheet covering her. Her left hand is immobilised, encased in plaster of paris; she's been told her wrist is fractured, along with three ribs on her left side. She is covered in cuts and bruises. She has a head injury which caused a mild concussion and she is dehydrated; nobody knows how long she was left in that alleyway. She's been told she'll need to stay overnight for observation.

"So long?" she'd asked, and "Don't you have an osteo-regenerator?"

Her query had caused another flurry of questions, of lights being shone into her eyes, and a promise to have a psych consult stop by.

She doesn't understand any of this, but she does understand that she's not where she's supposed to be.

And she knows she's scared.

===0===

Jane wakes to the violet splash of sunset, and to Nurse Marley checking the plastic tubing that runs into her arm. The television is still switched on. A blonde woman wearing a great deal of makeup is talking to the camera about an unidentified flying object.

"Probably just some experimental air force plane," Marley opines when she notices Jane watching it. "God only knows what kind of technology we average joes never hear about."

A fuzzy image of a spoon-shaped white object is shown on the screen, and Jane thinks, _Voyager_.

"You hungry, hon?" Marley asks. "They didn't leave your dinner tray because you were sleeping, but I can get you something from the cafeteria."

Jane thanks her, but declines.

"You remember anything yet?"

 _I can't tell her anything_ , Jane thinks. _Temporal prime directive_.

And then, in a rush of images so violent, so vivid she almost vomits, she remembers. She remembers everything.

"Hey," Marley's face is lined in alarm. "What is it, honey?"

"It's nothing," Captain Kathryn Janeway manages, "I'm fine."

"You sure?" Marley presses the back of her hand to Kathryn's sweating forehead.

"I'm sure." Kathryn tries to smile at her. "But if the offer's still open, I'd kill for a coffee."

Page 3 of 3


	2. And still those voices are calling

**Part Two: And still those voices are calling from far away**

"So you don't remember anything about being attacked?"

"No, I don't," Kathryn clips out impatiently. The young detective has asked her this question four or five times now, and seems to be growing more suspicious with Kathryn's every denial.

 _Perhaps_ , she thinks, _I'm not as a good a liar as I thought I was_.

Detective Sanchez and her partner exchange another loaded glance, and Kathryn is sideswiped with a sense of familiarity and loss. _Chakotay_ , she thinks. _Where are you? What's happened to you? Why hasn't_ Voyager _rescued me_?

The white suit she'd been wearing is bagged up in plastic in a police evidence locker, she's told; it's covered in blood and dirt, and might offer clues as to who attacked her. The police believe she was – what did they call it? – mugged, because the purse they assume she was carrying is missing.

In essence they're not wrong. She doesn't know who attacked her, but robbery seems a viable motive. Unless it was Henry Starling's thugs, which is almost a less appealing thought than being assaulted by a stranger.

Kathryn deduces that her combadge is long gone. That, at least, partly explains why she's had no contact from _Voyager_. Her tricorder is missing, too, a fact that makes her cringe. A Starfleet communicator might be mistaken for jewellery, but Earth in this century is technologically advanced enough that a tricorder would not go uninvestigated.

Perhaps it would be better if her attackers turned out to be from Chronowerx. At least then her missing tricorder couldn't contaminate the timeline any more than Starling already has.

"All right, Ms Doe." Detective Sanchez has clearly grown tired of Kathryn's stonewalling. "If you remember anything, be sure to give us a call."

"Thank you," she says automatically.

Sanchez's partner, more sympathetic than the detective, offers her a folded sheet of paper. "These are some numbers you can call in case you need a place to stay," he offers. "Refuges, charities and so on."

She gives him a grateful smile and turns back to the television. The news station is still playing the same footage of _Voyager_ as last night's broadcast. There is nothing to be learned from it, so she returns her attention to prodding her faulty memory like a tongue on a sore tooth.

She had ordered Tuvok and Tom to check out the signal transmitting from the observatory while she and Chakotay stayed behind to speak with that homeless, maddened version of Captain Braxton. They'd followed him into an alley, listened to his incredible tale of crashing the timeship and Starling's thievery of its twenty-ninth century technology. And then…

She remembers turning back to Chakotay, intending to suggest they visit Chronowerx, and then a harsh blow to her head. The only thing she can recall after that is pain.

===0===

By early afternoon, 'Jane Doe' has been assessed by a tired-looking social worker, a slick-suited psychologist and a baby-faced doctor, declared mentally and physically fit, and officially discharged.

Nurse Marley brings her clothing from something she calls 'Lost Property' – soft grey sweat pants, slip-on shoes and a too-big T-shirt that's emblazoned with three scruffy young men and the word 'Nirvana' – and helps Kathryn as she struggles, one-handed, to tighten the drawstring on the pants.

"You're about the size of my sixteen-year-old," she comments. "If you're not in a hurry, I'll call her to bring you some clothes when she gets out from school."

Kathryn accepts Marley's offer with thanks, tucks herself into a corner of the cafeteria with a Styrofoam cup of weak, dismal coffee, and tries to come up with a plan.

 _Did Tom and Tuvok make it back to the ship_? she wonders. _Was Chakotay hurt in the attack, too? And if he was, where is he now_?

She picks listlessly at a stale muffin Marley kindly bought her from the cafeteria and wonders how she's going to get home.

===0===

Carrying a plastic bag of secondhand clothes, her pockets jingling with spare change Marley scraped up from the depths of her purse, Kathryn pulls a baseball cap over her ponytail and heads in the direction of the Chronowerx skyscraper.

The sun is low on the horizon by the time she reaches the building. She's hungry and exhausted and her head is pounding, and for a moment she wonders whether to find something to eat, somewhere to rest for the night, before she tackles Henry Starling. But weakness is unbecoming of a Starfleet captain, displaced in time though she may be, so she pushes her way into the foyer.

"I'm sorry, Mr Starling isn't available without an appointment," the receptionist tells her, eyeing Kathryn's bruised face and the cast on her arm.

Kathryn glances around. People are hurrying, their faces creased with worry. She wonders if this is normal for Chronowerx employees … but then she sees the dark-suited men spilling out of the elevator and the police officers entering the foyer. She drifts in their direction, trying to look disinterested, as the two groups meet.

In snatches of overheard conversation, she learns that Henry Starling, founder of Chronowerx, father of the twentieth-century technological age, has gone missing.

She watches as the policemen are escorted into the elevator. When the doors shut her out, she turns and leaves the building.

Kathryn spends the night huddled under the boardwalk, wrapped in a fleecy jacket Marley's daughter had given her. She's hungry and thirsty but she's too nervous to spend any of Marley's money. First thing tomorrow she'll have to find a way to contact _Voyager_.

She curls up, rests her head against a wooden post, and tries to ignore the ache in her arm, the pounding in her head and the hollow feeling in her chest.

===0===

When she returns to Chronowerx the next morning, the place is in a state of barely-contained panic.

Starling is still missing. The foyer is full of his security staff – they're easy to spot – and police. The harried receptionist is answering three phones at once. Kathryn slips by her and enters an elevator, pressing the button for the topmost floor.

There are fewer people here. She picks up a stack of papers from a desk and walks determinedly toward the huge glass office she assumes belongs to Starling. Nobody challenges her.

One-handed, Kathryn taps awkwardly at his desktop computer, trying to crack his password. If only B'Elanna were here. If only she had a tricorder. On her fifth unsuccessful attempt, the computer shuts itself down and a wailing alarm starts up throughout the top level of the building. Heart racing, she bolts from the office and finds the exit to the fire stairs, slipping through it just as she hears the thud of feet running along the corridor.

She curses under her breath, clutching her meagre bag of possessions to her chest with her broken arm as she flies down the stairs.

The fire door on the top floor opens and she hears a shout. Dashing through the door on the next landing, Kathryn finds herself in a large cafeteria, far more luxuriously appointed than the one at the hospital. A man is reading a newspaper and sipping coffee at a corner table, but he pays her no attention. She slows to walk nonchalantly past him, turns into a corridor and races for the elevator bank.

The elevator she enters takes her smoothly to the ground floor, and Kathryn tugs the peak of her cap over her eyes and strolls out into fresh air and freedom.

===0===

 _Now what_?

Biting her lip, she huddles on a bench outside the Chronowerx tower, arms wrapped around her knees. It's a warm day but she feels cold, small chills racking her every so often and crescendoing the ache in her head to a dull roar. She peels the bandage away from the gash on her upper left arm and finds the skin beneath it livid.

 _Infection_ , she recognises.

If she were in Sickbay right now, the Doctor could take care of this with a hypospray of antibiotics and a dermal regenerator. Marooned in late twentieth-century Los Angeles, injured and broke and alone, she has no idea what to do. She feels panic closing in.

 _Get it together, Captain_ , she rebukes herself.

Listlessly she gets to her feet and wanders in the direction of the beach. There's a hotdog stand where she'll spend some of her precious money on her only meal of the day, and then maybe she'll navigate her way to one of the refuges that police officer had told her about.

First, though, she needs to eat. Black sparkles are starting to prick her vision and her knees are shaking. The beach seems suddenly far away. As Kathryn's steps begin to slow, she feels a strong hand grip her upper arm. She whirls, ready to fight.

At the sight of Chakotay, all the adrenaline drains right out of her.

"Kathryn." He has both hands on her arms now, his eyes searching her face. "Thank God I found you. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she whispers, and passes out into his arms.


	3. This could be heaven

**Part Three: This could be heaven or this could be hell**

"You're awake."

Kathryn blinks and her surroundings swim into focus. The room she's in is dingy and small. Faint light filters through dirty vertical blinds, casting the walls in a sickly mint-green. She's lying on a threadbare couch which might be comfortable if it weren't for the broken spring poking into her back.

But the sight she sees as she turns her head is so beautiful it makes up for all of it.

"Chakotay," she exhales, struggling to sit up.

"Hey, take it easy. You're not doing so well." Chakotay slides an arm around her back, supporting her as she groans and raises her uninjured hand to her head. "You have a fever from the infection. Here, drink this."

She sips the water gratefully. "Where are we?"

"My hotel room. Although I think they call it a motel, actually." He gives her a small smile.

"How did you pay for this? Is _Voyager_ here? Have you contacted them?"

"Kathryn, slow down." Chakotay hands her two white capsules. "Antibiotics. Take them, and then I'll tell you everything I know."

Impatiently she swallows them back with a gulp of water, letting her head fall back against the cushion. "Report, Commander."

"I haven't been able to reach _Voyager_ ," he tells her. "My combadge was destroyed when those thugs jumped us. I chased them off, but one of them stuck me with a knife."

He raises his shirt to show her and her eyes widen in horror at the bandage across his abdomen.

"It's fine. But I passed out from blood loss, apparently, and by the time I came to I was in an ambulance."

For the first time she notices how exhausted he looks, his golden skin paler than it should be.

"They stitched me up, pumped some blood into me and I discharged myself to look for you, but of course you weren't in the alley anymore. And I couldn't find you at any of the local hospitals. Nobody had any record of Kathryn Janeway."

"I didn't know who I was," she blurts. "Post-traumatic amnesia, the doctor called it."

He looks horrified. "Are you all right now?"

"My memories are back, yes. Chakotay, how did you know where to find me today?"

"I didn't. I was desperate. In the end I figured you'd try Chronowerx eventually. If you were still alive." His voice cracks ever so slightly and she grips his hand.

"I'm okay," she says gently. "Chakotay, we need to contact _Voyager_."

"I still have my tricorder," he answers. "I've tried increasing the scanning range, but I'm no engineer. Are you up to taking a look at it?"

Kathryn nods. "Help me up?"

He manoeuvres her upright on the couch and brings the tricorder over.

"I don't suppose you have any coffee?" she asks hopefully as she starts tapping buttons with her good hand.

He says nothing, and when she looks up she finds him watching her with an expression in his eyes that she isn't sure how to define.

"It's good to have you back, Kathryn," he says softly.

===0===

An hour later she lays the tricorder in her lap with shaking hands.

"They're not up there."

Chakotay's brow furrows as he turns from the tiny kitchenette, carrying two mugs of tea. "What do you mean, they're not up there?"

"I mean I've tweaked this thing until it should be able to detect life on Alpha Centauri, and I'm not detecting any sign of _Voyager_." She clenches her fingers, staring at the dull brown carpet. "What I am detecting is a temporal displacement signature. It's too recent to be the rift _Voyager_ came through from our century."

"So what does that mean?" Chakotay sits beside her.

"It means," she says evenly, "that either _Voyager_ returned to the twenty-fourth century without us, or Henry Starling launched Braxton's timeship and went to the future."

Chakotay stares at her. "If Starling launched the _Aeon_ , _Voyager_ would have taken any measures necessary to stop him activating the temporal matrix. Which means…" he hesitates, "which means, given that you and I are still here, they're unable to rescue us."

He doesn't need to spell it out.

"That's not even the worst of it," Kathryn says quietly. "If Starling goes to the twenty-ninth century in that timeship, everything Braxton told us will come to pass. The entire Sol system will be destroyed. And there's nothing we can do to stop it."

===0===

Kathryn wakes with a jolt as the door to their motel room swings shut. "Chakotay?"

"It's me." He holds up a plastic bag. "I went to get supplies."

She pushes upright on the bed, testing her limbs for pain, and finds that it's receded somewhat. Her head feels clearer, too.

Chakotay sits on the edge of the bed. "You're looking a little better. Let me check your temperature."

Obediently she lets him slip the primitive thermometer under her tongue. When he takes it out and reads it, he smiles.

"Your fever's broken. How's your arm? Any pain?"

"Nothing I can't handle." She pushes the sheet away and stops abruptly, realising her legs are bare beneath the oversized Nirvana t-shirt. "Could you pass me some pants?"

He hands her a pair of sweats from her bag of hand-me-downs and turns his back politely to allow her to dress.

"How long have we been here now?" she asks, sitting at the kitchen bench while he brews coffee.

"Four days, give or take."

"Any word from Tuvok or Tom?" She holds her breath, even knowing his answer. If he'd heard from the other half of the away team, he'd have told her so immediately.

Chakotay shakes his head. "No Vulcan lifesigns on the tricorder either. I guess they made it back to the ship."

Kathryn accepts a cup of coffee and stares into it. "What are we going to do, Chakotay?" she whispers.

He leans across the bench to take her hand. "What we always do, Kathryn. Survive."

===0===

There's a television in their room. It only works occasionally and the picture is grainy, but it's enough for Kathryn to watch the news broadcasts. Henry Starling is still missing, Chronowerx is on the verge of receivership, and there are no more reports of UFO sightings.

She sets up the tricorder to scan continuously for signs of _Voyager_ in orbit, of increased temporal flux, of anything that might indicate they have a chance of getting home. Within a day, she's feeling strong enough to venture outside and insists that she and Chakotay return to Braxton's alley.

He's gone, and with him goes another little piece of her hope.

They've been living in the hotel for a week when Chakotay tells her the money is running out. He's rigged the tricorder to siphon cash from the ATMs, but he's concerned that sooner or later they'll be caught. He says they can't afford to stay in the motel, as insalubrious as it is. He says they need to find a cheap place to rent. They need to get jobs.

Kathryn goes along with it. While Chakotay searches for a place to live, she teaches herself to use the internet on the local library computers. It's not long before she's proficient enough to create them false identities – birth records, social security numbers, bank accounts. By the end of their second week in Los Angeles, they have enough forged documentation to enable 'Jack Taylor' and 'Kate Jensen' to enter the workforce.

They move into a tiny third-floor studio apartment. It's cheap by local standards, and it's not hard to see why; the plumbing is noisy and the hot water unreliable, the walls are paper-thin, and they have to stock up on roach killer. Kathryn sleeps in the bed – or, rather, fold-out couch – at Chakotay's insistence. He stretches out on the floor.

Chakotay gets a construction job on his second day of hunting, leaving Kathryn alone with her tricorder. He leaves before dawn and returns exhausted in the late afternoon; most days he stumbles straight into a shower, picks at whatever she's ineptly cooked for dinner and passes out.

Kathryn shops for groceries, visits the library and scans the newspapers for any hint of the return of _Voyager_ , or of Henry Starling, but the walls close in on her whenever she's alone in the apartment. She's bored, and lonely, and terribly homesick, and she finds herself snapping at Chakotay despite his unfailing good humour.

In a way, it's New Earth all over again, only this time they're not in paradise.

Kathryn has to wait until her cast is removed before she can find work, but the minute she leaves the local walk-in clinic, her arm bare and skinny from muscle wastage, she lands a waitressing job. She's fired within the hour for dropping a tray of drinks on a customer. Undaunted, she fronts up to a clothing boutique. She loses the job a couple of hours later when her new boss gives her a pop quiz on fabrics and laundry instructions, which she fails miserably.

When Chakotay arrives home that afternoon he finds her curled up on the couch, her face set and her shoulders taut. The tricorder is in pieces on the kitchen bench.

"Get up," he orders her. "We're going out."

"Out?" She stares at him. "Chakotay, we can't afford it."

"We'll manage." He rummages in the closet, pulls out jeans and a black scoop-necked top with only one fraying cuff, tosses them to her. "I'm taking you out for dinner."

"What if I don't want to go?" The set of her mouth is mulish.

"I'm not giving you a choice, Kathryn. You need a break, and so do I." He pushes a hand through his hair and meets her glare. "I'm taking a shower, and you'd better be ready to go when I get out."

"Yes, _sir_ ," she mutters sarcastically to his retreating back.

===0===

"I'll take two shots of your cheapest tequila," Chakotay orders the barman.

Kathryn has talked him out of taking her to a restaurant. Instead, they've found a dive bar with a pool table, and her eyes have lit up for the first time since they were stranded here.

He leans against the bar and watches as she hustles her first victim, smiling proudly at her when she cleans the table. "Guess I won enough cash to cover a few more drinks," she grins at him, and Chakotay laughs back, delighted to see her happy.

Even if it's only for tonight.

She plays a couple more games, then shuffles onto the bench seat beside Chakotay in the booth he's settled into. They clink glasses and laugh, and Kathryn's head spins lazily as the alcohol bubbles through her blood.

"Another?" he smiles at her.

Her automatic reaction is to say no; she's the captain, after all, and she has to keep a clear head … Except she's not the captain anymore. She's not the accomplished Kathryn Janeway, with her doctorates in cosmology and her intimate knowledge of advanced technology. She's Kate Jensen, who lives a hand-to-mouth existence in a rented hovel and can't even keep a job in the service industry.

"Yeah," she says, holding Chakotay's gaze a little longer than she's ever allowed herself before. "Keep 'em coming."


	4. You can check out any time you like

**Part Four: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave**

Captain Kathryn Janeway lies rigid on the lumpy fold-out sofa and stares at the ceiling.

Her head aches, her stomach churns and her throat is dust-dry. But worst of all is the ravaging clamour of her conscience.

Beside her, Chakotay's breathing is soft and even. His arm is still curled around her, their bare legs tangled under the covers. She wonders if he's sleeping deeply enough that she can escape without waking him.

She shifts, and feels the tension in his limbs as he comes into consciousness. She can barely bring herself to turn her head and meet his unfocused gaze.

"Kathryn," he says, and blinks, and she watches his eyes turn soft and heated. A dimple appears in one cheek.

The hand that had curled loosely, warmly, around her hip now travels upward over her body, making her suck in a breath. Chakotay pushes up on one elbow and leans in to nuzzle his lips against her face.

"Good morning," he murmurs against her lips. He kisses her, but pulls back when she doesn't respond. His eyes are wary now.

Captain Kathryn Janeway slides out from the bed, covering herself with her arms until she can yank on a t-shirt. Her lips feel swollen, her thighs sticky and aching. But she holds herself straight and forces herself to meet her first officer's eyes.

"This was a mistake."

===0===

If he would argue with her, if he'd lash out verbally or even with his fists, maybe she wouldn't feel so wretched. But he's not that kind of man. He's Chakotay, and his reaction is exactly the one she should have expected from him.

A small inhalation while he absorbs her words, a bow of the head, and then a slight smile as he stands, wrapping the sheet around his hips. "Okay, Kathryn," he says in that soft voice that has always been her undoing. "It's okay."

Then he collects her clothes from the closet and places them in her arms, ushering her into the tiny bathroom. She comes out, showered and dressed, to find fresh coffee waiting.

Chakotay smiles at her, warmer now. "I'm due at work," he says. "I'll see you later."

The door closes quietly behind him and Kathryn drops her face into her hands and gives into wracking, sore, undisciplined sobs.

===0===

A few days later, she finds a job filing in a small legal office. She doesn't mind the work; it's dull and repetitive, but she finds satisfaction in its orderliness.

And it gives her the space to turn over ideas in her mind. She's determined to get back to her own century. There must be a way to do it; surely Starling left some technology behind, or Captain Braxton can be found and coerced into helping them?

She talks her ideas over with Chakotay in the evenings. Things were strained between them for a day or two, but as he's apparently resolved to treat her exactly the way he did before that night, she slowly allows herself to relax in his presence. He's good to bounce her thoughts off; he always has been. He makes her consider the flaws in her theories, to follow tangents she might not have otherwise considered.

But a couple of weeks later, when she's mulling over a plan to file a missing persons report for Braxton, Chakotay puts down his fork and looks at her evenly.

"What is it that you think Braxton can do for us?" he asks. "He's been stuck here for thirty years. Don't you think that if he could find a way to travel back to the future, he'd have done it by now?"

"For thirty years, he had nobody," she replies edgily. "Now that we're here, maybe if the three of us put our heads together –"

"Enough," he says. His voice is quiet but authoritative, and Kathryn stops talking to stare at him. "Kathryn, it's been weeks, and there's been no sign of _Voyager_ or the _Aeon_. They're gone, and without them we have no way to get back, Braxton or no Braxton."

She focuses on him properly for perhaps the first time in weeks. He's different; she can see that now. It's not just the physical changes that his manual-labour job has wrought – the darker tan, the calloused hands, the bulkier shoulders. He looks more solid than he did on _Voyager_ , somehow, more real. More certain.

"I know you don't want to accept that this is our life now," he continues. "But I'll help you, if you'll let me."

He reaches across the tiny kitchen table to take her hand.

"I'm sorry, Kathryn," he says, softer now. "I'm sorry we've lost them. I miss them, too."

She wants to shout at him, to slap him, to run. But instead, her fingers fold into his and she grips on as tightly as she can while the tears spill down her cheeks.

===0===

He finds her at the bar where they'd got drunk on tequila. She's huddled into a corner booth nursing a tumbler of whiskey, eyes focused on her own misery.

He slides in beside her, counts the glasses littering the table.

"They're gone, aren't they," she says, her fingers turning the tumbler around and around. "They're all dead. And we're never going home again."

Chakotay puts his arm around her shoulders.

"How do you do it?" she mumbles, pressing her face into his chest. "How do you just … accept where you end up?"

He's silent for a long moment, then, "It's different for me, Kathryn."

"How so?"

He shifts, tugs his earlobe.

"It's different," he admits, softly, "because even though I've lost everything else I still have the most important person in my life, right here with me."

It takes him a while to gather the courage to look into her eyes, and when he does his heart sinks. There's affection there, desire certainly, but it's tempered by the way she's worrying at her lower lip.

Chakotay looks away.

"I'm not asking for anything from you but friendship, Kathryn," he mumbles. "I know you don't feel the way I do."

"It's not … I don't …" she stops. "I can't, Chakotay. I need … I don't know what I need."

"You're grieving." He turns back to her and his eyes are calm again, his face composed. "I understand, and I want to help you. But this," he gestures at the whiskey spills on the table, "this is probably not the best way."

Kathryn tries to smile at him but it wobbles, turns watery. "Then maybe you should get me out of here, Commander."

"Come on," he smiles, helping her out of the booth.

===0===

The construction company lays off a dozen workers, Chakotay included, the same week Kathryn loses her filing job. Within a few days their meagre savings are gone.

"We can't stay here," Chakotay pronounces as they share a cup of beans and rice at their kitchen table. "We need to move somewhere we can get steady jobs, find a bigger place to live."

"But if we leave LA, they'll never find us," Kathryn blurts.

Chakotay stares at her. "Who, Kathryn? Who do you think is going to find us?"

She's already regretting it. "I don't know. But we're dealing with time travel here, Chakotay. Who's to say that someone from the future isn't going to show up and take us back home?"

Abruptly, he pushes away from the table, pacing the tiny apartment. "We've been here for months and they haven't shown up yet, have they?" He glares at her, hands low on his hips. "Nobody is looking for us, Kathryn. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll adjust to the fact that _we live in this century now_."

"As you were, Commander," she snaps, rising, steel in her eyes.

Chakotay barks out a laugh. "Will you listen to yourself? We are not in a command structure anymore, _Kathryn_. We're just ordinary civilians, trying to get by. Maybe you can live on the faint hope that someday, someone will miraculously appear to rescue us, but I'd rather live in the real worl-"

The sharp crack of her hand against his cheek cuts him off.

Stunned, he stares at her. Her colour is high, her chest heaving, mouth trembling. The space between them is heavy and fervid.

Just as he's drawn breath to apologise, Kathryn steps up to him, rises on the balls of her feet, and drags his mouth to hers.

He doesn't hesitate. His arms are crushing her close, his hand winding into her hair. His tongue delves into her open mouth and she groans, sucking him in, her fingers clutching at his shirt as her body presses into his. He breaks the kiss to nip at her jaw and she throws her head back, moaning, "oh, God, please."

Chakotay pulls back, holding her at arm's length, trying to bring his breathing under control.

"Kathryn," he husks. "Kathryn, what are we doing?"

She doesn't want to open her eyes. She doesn't want to see him, his face open and longing. She just wants to feel.

"I need you," she forces herself to grit out, her body pressing insistently to his.

Chakotay releases her and steps back.

"I can't," he tells her, and she aches at the misery in his voice and at the loss of his hands on her. "I can be anything else you need me to, but I can't be your warm body to fuck, Kathryn. I'm sorry."

She can't look at him as he walks out on her. By the time he creeps back into the apartment it's the early hours of the morning, and she keeps her eyes closed as he settles onto his pallet, even though she knows that he knows she's not asleep.

===0===

In the morning they silently pack up the apartment.

Chakotay books them on a bus to Santa Barbara. From there, he mutters as they board, they can catch their breath, look around, try to figure out their next move.

Kathryn says nothing, huddled silently into the seat by the window. This is his show now.

Exhausted and lulled by the low rumble of the bus's engine, she sinks into sleep. She wakes to the warm touch of a hand on her shoulder.

"Kathryn," he murmurs. "We're here."

While they're in Santa Barbara, exploring by day and bunking in a flea-ridden motel each night, Kathryn spends a lot of time thinking. Chakotay behaves toward her exactly as he always has: solicitous, chivalrous, and always aware of her. He can tell when she's hungry or sad or desperate for caffeine without her saying a word or so much as frowning. He smiles at her, offers jokes and observations, carries her pack when he notices her rubbing at sore shoulders.

And because he's exactly as he always has been, she begins to let go of her shame at her attempted seduction.

They board another bus. It stops in a tiny beachside town where they buy sandwiches and wander down to the shore, and as Chakotay passes her coffee in a Styrofoam cup, Kathryn looks at him and the truth of it hits her like a plasma explosion.

She must make a sound – breathless and small – because Chakotay's forehead furrows. "Are you all right?"

She puts down her coffee and picks up his hand. His eyes are guarded. She smiles.

It's a wide, unconstrained, shining smile, and he inhales sharply in response.

"Yes," she says, "I think I am."

And she brings their joined hands to her cheek, her eyes telling him everything as she leans in to kiss him.


	5. Epilogue: Up ahead in the distance

**Epilogue:** **Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light**

They've been living in Avila Beach for two years now, in a ramshackle weatherboard cottage a few streets back from the beachfront. Kathryn has a vegetable garden that produces tomatoes and spinach, and a swing chair on the front porch where she curls up with paperback novels, and on the weekends she's learning to surf.

Chakotay has opened a handmade furniture store in nearby San Luis Obispo and moonlights for the fire department, and Kathryn teaches engineering students at the Polytechnic. They'd thought long and hard about falsifying the necessary credentials – Chakotay had been against it, believing they should stick to less noticeable professions – but Kathryn couldn't bear the thought of spending her life as a waitress or receptionist, and in the end Chakotay had given in.

There's a small Native American population here and they've welcomed Chakotay with open arms. It's easy to see that he's happy, that he feels a sense of belonging he never had with his own family, that he'd previously only ever found on their lost starship.

It's taken Kathryn longer to settle in. Some nights, as they lie entwined in the bed Chakotay built for them, in their little cottage by the sea, she still slips out of his embrace and wanders outside to gaze up at the stars.

But he always comes to find her after a little while, wraps his arms around her from behind and presses his face into her neck.

"Thinking about home?" he'll ask her.

And she'll turn to him, cradle his beloved face in her hands, and say, "I am home."


End file.
